RPF-Inkotanyi Chairman and presidential flag-bearer Paul Kagame has said that the next seven years of his leadership – should he get the mandate – will be about giving a new momentum to the transformation journey the country embarked on two decades ago.
RPF-Inkotanyi Chairman and presidential flag-bearer Paul Kagame has said that the next seven years of his leadership – should he get the mandate – will be about giving a new momentum to the transformation journey the country embarked on two decades ago.
Kagame was speaking on Thursday during a campaign rally in Bushoki Sector in Rulindo District, where he held his first campaign stop of the day.
He was accompanied by the First Lady Jeannette Kagame, among others.
The incumbent said the new momentum should be about creating an environment that will ensure children born in Rwanda will have the opportunity to flourish.
"It is about writing a new history of a nation,” he told the nearly 200,000 Rulindo residents who attended the rally.
He added: "We will continue building a country in which our children will thrive and women have equal opportunities as men. We must all grow at same pace,” he said.
Kagame commended the eight political parties that backed the RPF-Inkotanyi presidential candidate, saying it underlines the governing party’s ideology of unity.
"RPF politics is not about dividing and destroying. It is about transformation and rebuilding," Kagame said.
Speaking at the rally, Dr Vincent Biruta, the president of Social Democratic Party (PSD), said his party chose to support Kagame because they believed in his capacity to lead Rwandans to a better future.
He said that PSD and RPF, whose cooperation spans over 25 year, have a lot in common.
"RPF-Inkotanyi promotes unity, democracy, development, good governance and social welfare. These are the same pillars on which our party PSD is built. Above all, they believe in consensual rather than confrontational politics which we also espouse,” said Biruta, who is also the Minister for Natural Resources.
Biruta, who hails from Rulindo, added that PSD’s decision to present the RPF-Inkotanyi Chairman as its flag bearer in light of the fact that millions of Rwandans successfully petitioned parliament to amend the constitution to remove legal barriers to Kagame standing for another term in office.
Biruta recalled the insecurity that Rulindo experienced in the late 1990s caused by insurgents that had crossed into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo and commended the RPF-led government for restore peace and security across the country.
Kagame later held another rally at Nyamirambo in Kigali’s Nyarugenge District.